This Miami-based painter draws upon images both commonplace and surreal to create powerful modern-day hieroglyphics.

Art Show: Philip Smith

Art Show: Philip Smith

Clocks, hands, double helices, and other pictographic motifs float on monotone canvases, reasserting themselves from painting to painting like a recurring dream you can't quite decipher. Random household items—forks, a box of cream cheese, a coin, a ball of string—pop up mysteriously. Their simple outlines are scratched into the oily, waxy surface with a screwdriver, and then sometimes rubbed out, leaving spectral erasures.

The deeply personal symbolism of Smith's art sets it apart from the detached approach of many of his contemporaries who appropriated images in a deadpan or ironic fashion. According to Jen Mergel, senior curator of contemporary art at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Smith has shown "how an image-saturated age doesn't just affect our conscious, but also our subconscious."

Moving from his native Miami to New York in 1974, Smith, then in his early 20s, found work writing for Interview and as managing editor of GQ, jobs that led to introductions to Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and other well-known artists. The lessons Smith gleaned were subtle but potent. After a long night of drinking, Robert Rauschenberg pulled out a match to light a cigarette, then changed his mind. "Most people would throw the match out," Smith says. "He very slowly tucked it back into the matchbook. The respect he showed that little cardboard match was a lesson: Respect your materials."